Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday October 12, 2009 @03:56PM
from the time-for-an-injection-of-common-sense dept.

Techdirt is reporting that one unfortunate, unemployed New York lawyer recently had her unemployment benefits greatly reduced because of the incredible $1/day she was earning via ads on her blog. "The whole thing sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare, with NY State asking her to get a form from her new 'employer' who didn't exist. Then NY Department of Labor started giving her all sorts of contradicting information, and eventually an 'investigation' into her 'business' — during which time her unemployment benefits were stopped entirely. She's now pulled the Google AdSense from her blog (total earned over the life of the blog $238.75)."

Back in 2000 I was denied unemployment benefits because I made the mistake of telling the interviewer I had tried to get some contract positions. Never mind that I DIDN'T GET THEM, simply the fact I was now "an independent contractor" meant I was employed.

Never tell them anything. No, woe si me; I'm unemployed and unemployable, I simply don't know what I am going to do...

Yeah, I had something similar happen... in 2001 my side jobs ended, then my day job... because I had contract work, on my taxes, I was "self-employed"... not good. Considering I paid more in taxes in 2000-2001 than I earned in 2002-2005, I feel kind of ripped off.

Are you kidding?? I'm a lawyer in NY, and the job market here is bad to the point of ridiculousness. Any open position will have hundreds of applicants, and the worst thing is it's probably never going to recover. Too many law schools, too many ignorant law school applicants, and too many law school administrators who are the only ones who benefit from the lawyer explosion.

The way I see it, they've done a very good job at creating their own job security, in the same way that civil engineers seem to love placing manholes right in the tire path in roads. (i.e. causing the suspension of the car passing over it to bounce, ultimately tearing up the road down wind of the manhole, creating a job for a civil engineer to oversee rebuilding of said road)

I'm quite happy to have a world with less lawyers. The profession itself is evidence that the Law is too complex.

If a law is written in such a fashion that the average citizen cannot understand it, let alone defend themselves in a court with it, liberty is damaged.

I would imagine that the reason that laws are so complex is due to the fact that too many people have used loopholes to cover up their wrongdoing, and lawmakers have had to react by making laws longer and more drawn out in order to ensure that any possible loopholes are filled. Don't blame the lawmakers. Blame the criminals who forced the lawmakers to make more and more complex laws.

Ahem. "People" don't find the loopholes. Lawyers find them. If Joe and Margaret Sixpack want to cheat the government out of money, they aren't going to get away with it. They'll be taken to court, where some LAWYER will build some ridiculous defense using some set of loopholes that the Sixpacks would NEVER have thought of.

As someone moving into the field of 'law enforcement', allow me to give my own spin. It's the people, not the lawyers who find loopholes. That's why my pocket criminal code is so thick, it reads more like a modern day bible. And my traffic act is nearly 7" thick. It's not the smart people who figure out loopholes, it's the clever ones.

It is however the lawyers, who in turn successfully or unsuccessfully defend the person on the said charge which cause the law to be expanded to include a new definition.

People attempt to use loopholes all the time - the difference between the people and lawyers is that layers tend to be good at it.

Regarding the need for lawyers - it will always exist, even without such a complex legal system. A lawyer isn't simply about knowing the law, but also presenting a case with confidence and consistency - a professional presence.

I fight a lot of traffic tickets. Despite knowing quite a bit about the law, I still hand the cases over to a traffic lawyer - I need someone who is capabl

Assholes ruin everything for everyone else. They go searching for ways to be just annoying enough to be an "asshole" but take great care and diligence to make sure that they don't run afoul of any rules/laws that might be in place.

It doesn't matter where you draw the rules/laws, they are assholes, and will always exploit the current version to perfection.

Then, somebody comes along and says "There ought to be a law" because of some asshole somewhere. There is no cure for assholes, because they will always exist. And passing ridiculous rules/laws to prevent them from being assholes is stupid as it is pointless.

I know one asshole, when confronted about being an asshole ("you're ruining it for everyone else"), said "I don't care, I'm just playing by the rules". And when the rules changed because of the asshole, it diminishes us all. They don't care about "everyone else" which is why they are assholes.

Had problem with people like this on forums I've run. Habitual line steppers. They want to know right where the line is so they can dance right up to the edge of it. Then they always try to play the victim when yelled at. Making complex rules doesn't work either, they just keep it up. As such, on the forums I've worked on the rules got simplified: Don't be an asshole. I (or the other admins) am the arbiter of what that means. Over all, it works much better since everyone, including assholes, seems to understand it. While there is occasional bitching about vagueness (from assholes), seems to be that adults over all get the idea of what being an asshole is.

Now I'm not saying such a system would work for the courts, just affirming what the parent is saying that assholes are the problem and that complex rules don't seem to help.

I would argue that the correct way to close a loophole is to make the law simpler, not more complicated. It's like the joke someone had when the found the missing link, "As you can clearly see, there are now 2 gaps in the fossil record." Making laws more and more detailed and more and more specific opens them up for abuse because it creates more corner cases, which is where the abuse takes place.

This seems like the exact opposite of what they should be doing. Laws should be as simple as possible, leaving interpretation up to the judge and jury to determine whether a law was broken.

Perfect example is having a "no texting while driving law". And a "no cell phones without hands-free set" law. And a "no putting on makeup while driving law". And a "no eating hamburgers while driving law". And on, and on.

The law should just say something brief to the extent of "no distracted driving" that encompasse

Vague laws like the type you describe are the reason that we have a huge debate over the 2nd Amendment.

For those who are not familiar with this amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Does this mean that everyone has a right to bear arms, or only those within the State Militia(the military, specifically, the National Guard)? One argument says that since everyone was in the State Militia at the time, everyone should be able to bear arms. Another argument says that if someone wants to bear arms, they should join the military. Because the Amendment was so vague, we have this debate now. Granted, at the time, the lawmakers knew what they were wanting to say. However, as people die and the common language adapts and changes, the 'spirit of the law' becomes lost. This is why lawmakers are specific in what the law is meant to do, so that people in the future, and currently, know what the law is and is not forbidding or granting.

While I agree that getting too specific results in little leeway in court cases where the 'spirit of the law' does not cover this or that, I disagree that laws should be as vague as possible. A law such as 'No distracted driving', to the right court, could mean that a parent with a screaming child in the backseat is breaking the law. Or playing the radio is breaking the law(auditory distraction). Or talking to someone in the passenger is distracted driving.

I would like to see all the types of distracted driving placed into a single law, with amendments to the law as they are needed. I am not a lawyer, but I would imagine it would make the court system much more efficient, if each 'type of law' had its own specific place, and amendments were added instead of new laws being written.

I would like to see all the types of distracted driving placed into a single law, with amendments to the law as they are needed. I am not a lawyer, but I would imagine it would make the court system much more efficient, if each 'type of law' had its own specific place, and amendments were added instead of new laws being written.

Generally that's what happens. I think if everyone would actually look at their state statutes they'd find the laws really aren't as complicated as some people tend to think.

Laws are subjective, and the attitude of "let's try to cover every single detail imaginable!" is guaranteed to both leave loopholes as well as catch unintended targets in the overly-strict rules.

That's in addition to, of course, making laws so complex that both no one can know them and everyone is violating them. At least until we manage your hypothetical coding of every possible scenario ever into a computer, plus the reasoning for the computer to make judgements based on incomplete evidence. (which you

It's just like code - refactoring and removing old laws is vital. And laws that serve no purpose, aren't enforced, or cannot be enforced, should not stay on the books. The smallest set of rules is best, just as that government is best which governs least.

I am quite happy to have a world with fewer programmers. The profession itself is evidence that computers are too complex.

If a program is written in such a fashion that the average citizen cannot understand it, let alone fix its bugs, their freedom to tinker is damaged.

The law is complex, because the world is complex. The alternative to complex law is arbitrary judgements, or the state retreating from adjudicating relationships among citizens and corporations. (OK, some wooly-eyed anarchist is going to salivate at the latter prospect, but personally, I prefer police and judges to arbitration by baseball bats.)

I am quite happy to have a world with fewer programmers. The profession itself is evidence that computers are too complex.

If a program is written in such a fashion that the average citizen cannot understand it, let alone fix its bugs, their freedom to tinker is damaged.

The law is complex, because the world is complex. The alternative to complex law is arbitrary judgements, or the state retreating from adjudicating relationships among citizens and corporations. (OK, some wooly-eyed anarchist is going to salivate at the latter prospect, but personally, I prefer police and judges to arbitration by baseball bats.)

Who modded that flamebait? It may be controversial and sarcastic, but flamebait it ain't.

Most people have no particular obligation, need, or desire to fix programs or write their own. It's a total matter of choice.

However, everyone is expected to comply with the law, whether they like it or not. It is an obligation, enforced with guns. The law is so complex that it is understood that the average citizen cannot possibly understand most of it -- hence, specialists such as lawyers. At the same time, the average citizen is expected to fully comply with these laws he cannot possibly understand, under threat of severe penalties.

Perhaps one alternative to complex laws -- at least, ones the average everyday yob is likely to face -- is to clean them up and get judges that actually, you know, make judgements instead of metting out punishment according to what the rule books say. Traffic court is a great example, and one that most people have to tangle with at some point, often over some inane, niggling point of law that most people didn't even know was on the books.

But judges usually adhere to strict letter instead of the actual spirit, the intent, of the law, and pronounce you guilty and send you off with a fine. The only way out is to hire a lawyer for serious money, go through weeks or months of legal hassle, and maybe get some kind of reduction if you're lucky. It's too easy for judges to mindlessly throw the book at everyone instead of making actual judgement calls like "this person clearly meant no infraction, nothing happened because of it, off you go." Instead we get statutes that fill multiple volumes of books, and bewildered citizens being charged with crimes they didn't even know existed and never meant to violate.

If a law is written in such a fashion that the average citizen cannot understand it, let alone defend themselves in a court with it, liberty is damaged.

The thing about the law and complexity is it scales. If you're just a regular guy on the street, there isn't THAT much of the law you need to be aware of/understand. If you're a huge company, then yes, there's a lot more you have to be aware of, but you are in the position where you have the resources to do it.

A lot of the "complexity" people complain about in the law is an attempt to create a system that's objective as possible. It doesn't succeed totally, of course, but without this complexity I think it would be a lot worse.

I concur. I just started a Business Law class and had no clue about one of the primary components of a contract, consideration. Then it got more and more complex, things like "When is an offer considered to be accepted or even valid?" and that is just the basics.

"...I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise...I mean lawyers, after all, don't produce anything...and I worry that we are devoting too many of out best minds to this enterprise...I don't have any complaint about the quality of the council, except maybe we're wasting some of our best minds"

Earn a dollar a day off blog ads, and the government objects, confused and stupid while it "investigates"?

They only see "employer" giving cash, and "employee" receiving it. What's that old saying, if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail? Same reason the same people choke over volunteerism from time to time as violating labor wage laws.

I loved a quip my boss passed on from a talk by Greenspan lamenting the fact that our best and brightest went into investment banking instead of civil engineering. He said that for every investment banker you create one job, for every civil engineer you create 26. I think the quip applies equally to lawyers.

"...I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise...I mean lawyers, after all, don't produce anything...and I worry that we are devoting too many of out best minds to this enterprise...I don't have any complaint about the quality of the council, except maybe we're wasting some of our best minds"

The skillset that makes you good at the law doesn't necessarily translate well into other fields. Take a hypothetical college student; likes philoso

I worked at a Wall St. law firm for nearly 20 years (administration, not legal), and most of our lawyers lacked any identifiable skill, and definitely even a trace of analytical or verbal skills. They were drudges in the worst sense of the word -- hacks who had to go through six drafts of a client memo because they were to stupid to write legibly or have someone check their grammar. Of course, they were never allowed to go to court -- we had show-pony partners for that.

Somebody explain to me how this is different from someone selling Avon, or selling at the local farmers' market, or moonlighting as a musician at the local dive bar, or any other similar wellspring of unemployment stupidity?

So you're saying that you should be denied unemployment for fixing a friend's or family member's PCs on the side? Any hobby that happens to break even or make a small net profit? How about charity work? After all you *could* be getting paid for it, right?

I beleive that working as a contract employee, if you make less than $600, you do not have to report it.

I base this off of my previous place of employement where we would have to collect Tax information for the independant contractors we paid over $600, but did not need to worry about those we paid less than $600 a year.

Not really. While those are all sources of income, very few people would consider them for a primary occupation, and most people earning income from such ventures are still searching for a new career. Unemployment benefits should not punish those who put the effort in to maintain their livelihood simply because the government is too lazy to make a distinction between supplementary income and an actual job.

Bottom line is, unemployment is to fill in while you don't have a job. If you get money selling Avon, the farmer's market, or work as a musician, then you sorta have a job, don't you?

Maybe?

If I get fired from a minimum-wage 40 hour/week job, I'm out roughly $300/week.

If I can make $100/week selling Avon, or veggies at the farmer's market, or as a musician - I'm still not even making minimum wage.

I guess I'm not sure what the laws are regarding unemployment... It is entirely possible that any income at all is considered employment... But that hardly makes it right or sensible.

Seems to me that if the government considers roughly $300/week to be the minimum wage... Then anything less than $300/week should be considered some kind of unemployment. Or underemployment, if you'd prefer.

Regardless, it isn't enough money to live off of.

If you want to cut off the unemployment check because they're technically employed, that's fine... But if that crappy Avon income is all they've got, they're going to wind up on some other government benefit before too long - food stamps, or HUD, or something. Because that's just not enough money to live off of.

Of course, if you're making $1,000/week from Avon then there's absolutely no reason you should be getting unemployment of any kind... But that doesn't seem to be the case in this particular instance.

Also consider the possibility that this is an effect of austerity programs. The department may be under a lot of pressure to cut expenditures. A particular reason might be draconian federal audits. I do not keep up on this sort of thing anymore, but I have heard stories that the federal auditors can be real ass-holes. General government stupidity is always a good explanation, but during a Depression, austerity-driven stupidity is also pretty good.

This is the sort of nonsense that drives the American distrust of beaurocrats.

The plans of well meaning liberal Senators will eventually have to be implementedby civil servants with varying degrees of competence and empathy that have nointerest in being effective or efficient and infact will be rewarded by being asinefficient as they can and growing their own personal fiefdom.

This is best captured by the "spend your budget this year or lose it next year" approach to money.

Do you honestly think an HMO with a profit motive to deny you coverage is any better?

Yes, if they're allowed to compete with others offering similar services. It's when they don't have competition that it isn't optimal. So, allow them to compete across statea lines, and watch what happens.

Yes, but what you are missing is the people who are costing the HMO the most money are YOU, the customer. They will let you go the moment you need their services or the moment they can deny you coverage for your life threatening condition. Any fallacy about the market correcting the problem or unscrupulous companies going out of business flies in the couple hundred year reality of free market economies. You can argue that in a perfect free market with no barriers to entry and no government regulation that t

I've been unemployed for about 2 years now. I live in backwater Reno, NV and had worked in the gaming industry. Two strikes against me, I know. I had been in Silicon Valley for many years, but wanted a cheaper/nicer place to live. Its nice here, but if you make more than $100,000/year, they think you're some overpaid wallstreet crook.

Anyways, during the course of my job hunt I formed an LLC so I could accept 1099 work rather than just FT W2. I add a line to my contact letter that says, "I am available for full-time W2 employment, as well as contract-based 1099 projects." That's it. That's the whole deal.

Once Nevada found out about this they claim I own and operate a company, and are SUING me for 1 year's back unemployment. Uh, I don't have $12,000 sitting around guys. That's because I'm UNEMPLOYED.

I'm guessing that the state is just broke, and looking for every excuse they can to deny any benefit they can.

I one instant I just went from "moderate democrat" to "conservative republican", too. Interesting.

A similar thing happened to my Mom a while ago. She was injured on the job and taking L&I pay. With all her spare time I helped her set up a blog. Eventually she put Google ads on it and started raking in the big bucks (to the tune of about $3/month). After a few months of this, L&I got wind of it and claimed that this proved she was no longer injured and therefore entitled to no benefits.

She fought this decision and (eventually) won by pointing out that, even though her ads were 'making' money, she had never been paid since her ads never equaled $100 or more (as required by Google). If she had ever reached the $100 mark (even if it had taken years) she probably would have been out of luck.

But in her case, it all worked out well in the end. Her injury was due to and incident of workplace violence where her employer had been warned of the danger multiple times in the past (but did nothing to protect their people). She settled just a few days ago for $500K.

Says who? This is where our dated laws really show. Income is income and until we start looking at changing the law to better match what the population thinks is income, we're at a stalemate on the issue. I think this just highlights the lack of change that is going on in our country (US), I can't speak for anyone else.

Business owners are exempt from unemployment pay. This lawyer's $1 a month income could be considered a poorly-run business but still a business. What I'm curious to know is who reported her. Sounds like a real dick.

She reported herself. She was being a good person and reporting ALL income. The rare breed who'd probably pay local state tax on items purchased out of state.

From the Forbes article (it's linked from the linked article): When the check came in, Karin realized she had a legal obligation to disclose the income to New York State, even though doing so might reduce the weekly unemployment benefits she received.

This is an article about a person getting screwed over by unemployment, and you're evaluating her worthiness for a date? Can you turn that shit off for just a minute please? Because we're left with only one conclusion: that you evaluate all women this way, all the time, regardless of the context. Stop and think about how that makes women feel, and then maybe you'll understand why comments like this drive us away.

Of course he is. It's normal, healthy, and expected (assuming he's not married). Evaluating all women a single man encounters for possible romance is one of the most basic biological and psychological functions of a man, just as the opposite is normally true of a woman. That recognition of the fact that genders EXIST and HAVE A PURPOSE isn't an ethical problem, although it's often claimed to be.

Now, inappropriate actions can certainly be an ethical problem; but so long as the slashdot poster isn't her supervisor or therapist, evaluating her potential as a date isn't inappropriate.

The difference between the homeless guy holding a sign and the woman with a blog, is that the woman with a blog has a legal contract with Google that reports income on a 1099 form that Unemployment and the Government can check for income.

If she held up a sign in the streets that said "Will do legal work for food/change." and she had a solicitor's license she would earn food and cash, and earning cash for payment is one form of income the government and unemployment cannot track. She is legally supposed to r

I wonder if selling used games and videos on ebay constitutes income? I could probably argue "I paid $20 but only sold it for $10, so that's a loss not an income," but a lot of hassle. Maybe I won't be doing my annual Christmas clean-out/sale after all.

You can save money no matter how much you make. Saying "I don't make enough to save" is bullshit. People who make under 20k per year. In most areas you can rent for around $500 per month - it may be a shithole but it's a place to live (in some areas $500 gets you a damn fine apartment). That's about $6k per year. You can eat well for about $20-25 per week if you buy the right foods, which ads up to around $1000 per year for food. If you wanted to live on ramen you could cut that down to under $250 per

Another example of this phenonemon is stage hands in Hollywood who make a lot per hour on each film, but (predicably!) work only a fraction of the year, and get to claim unemployment insurance based on high per-hour earnings over that time between productions. Complete abuse of the system.

Not sure what unemployment is like in the peoples republic but here in Ohio the max payout is $502 per week and that's for a family of 4 that previously made at least $52k/year. From that $502/week you get to pay federal

Wow, I just looked it up and CA maxes at $450/week! That means a state with a 6% higher cost of living gives 12% worse benefits. Worse yet for those guys they are probably living within commute of LA so they really have an ~50% higher cost of living than most urban areas of Ohio. Anyone who thinks that receiving an extra $450/week is going to make those guys rich or make you poor is just fooling themselves. I can pretty much guarantee you that they would MUCH rather have a steady job that pays less, nothing

That she has some income shouldn't prevent benefits, especially when that income is next to nothing. She was averaging $30 a month, that's not exactly making ends-meet. Stripping her benefits for such a low sum would be akin to stripping unemployment benefits because someone bought you lunch.

I would feel differently if she were running a blog as a business, or if that blog brought in more money than unemployment would bring in. If you have already determined that there is a minimum amount of money a person should recieve while looking for another job, any supplimental income should simply reduce the benefits by whatever the supplimental income is, untill the difference is negative - i.e. making more money with the suppliment than full unemployment would give. Then it is simply re-classified as the primary income and you are considered self-employed.

To look at it another way, do they strip your unemployment because you're earning 2% in a savings account? I should hope not. That's what this is closer to. Either way, she was still unemployed, not even self-employed. She paid for the unemployment insurance, she should be able to collect it when she is unemployed.

I hope she puts ad-sense back up before she is slashdotted, that could make up for a lot of the shit NYC is pulling here.

Others are getting much more than $238 through web ads. Should they be running for unemployment benefits too?

Don't be such a dumbass. All they had to do was deduct $238 from one of her checks, but there's no option to do that with unemployment. The second you report any income, regardless of the source, you're employed. So if you take a contract job and get let go a month later, not only does unemployment stop paying you but then they'll turn around and claim you haven't been on the new job long enough to collect benefits. Too bad, buddy. You can't even collect the balance of benefits you were due.

So there's is absolutely zero incentive for people on unemployment to take what work they can find. If they would encourage people to take part-time and temporary jobs, deducting what they make from their benefit check so they don't lose money working, but restoring their benefits if those jobs fall through, then more people would be out working.

But the system we have today punishes people trying to do the right thing. Don't defend a broken system. They could use unemployment to encourage people go out and start a business, instead they discriminate against people wanting to work but unable to find a permanent job that lasts longer than 3 months.

They didn't stop her checks. They merely reduced the payout to reflect her new "part time but not fully employed" status. Unfortunately rather than subtracting $1 each month they subtract a percentage - about 33% - off your check.

That's why she removed the ads, so she can go back to getting full checks instead of ~66% checks.

...eventually an "investigation" into her "business" -- during which time her unemployment benefits were stopped entirely.

They cut her off until she had a hearing. That's the way it is here, too. Any income will trigger the cut off, then you have to fight to get them back. And, just like in her case, they'll do absolutely everything they can to dick people around.

Some of our volunteer firefighters have the same problem. At the end of the year the department gives them a gas money check. If they report that as income, the state cuts off their benefits. If they don't report it, the state accuses them of trying to hide income. For some people those benefits are the only thing keeping them from starving. The entire system is the functional equivalent of the current health care system. So I'm certain if anyone dared stand up to try and get a better safety net for the unemployed, the teabirthers would be out screaming about government take overs.

Sounds like being dependent on the government for your bread is great. Constantly jerked around by bureaucrats. Let's go ahead and expand the system even further.

Or we could privatize it, the way health care is private, because getting jerked around by for-profit insurance company bureaucrats is so much better than getting jerked around by government bureaucrats.

In Minnesota, you could turn around after that one-month temporary job and receive benefits from the first job (assuming you did not already exhaust them). Also, part-time work will reduce benefits dollar-for-dollar until you exceed 32 hours a week (or make more money from part-time work than you'd receive on unemployment).

As you point out, the real problem here is a system with idiotic rules, not her honesty in reporting $238.

So if you take a contract job and get let go a month later, not only does unemployment stop paying you but then they'll turn around and claim you haven't been on the new job long enough to collect benefits. Too bad, buddy. You can't even collect the balance of benefits you were due.

You, and the people who find your post insightful, should realize that unemployment regulations vary from state to state. Colorado, for instance, is far more rational than what you describe, coming close in several aspects to how you say it should work. (BTW, I agree with your post, just pointing out that not all states are so stupid!)

The part where it could be Buffalo or Uttica....I guess all of that noise about the rest of the state being pissed offthat Hillary's Senate opponent wasn't aware of the rest of the stateactually has some merit to it. [snicker]

The whole tax system is a mess that few understand even professionals. Last year H&R Block prepared my taxes as they've done since circa 1990, and the woman kept insisting I don't owe Oklahoma any taxes because I live in Virgina. I said "Yes but I *worked* in Oklahoma and you pay where you worked, just like I did last year when I worked in California, or the prior year when I worked in Florida." She said I was wrong and those previous years need to be fixed. I said I was right. She said I was wrong and then got her manager to back her up, which made me think maybe I was wrong after all.

Long story made short - They fucked up. Oklahoma fined me, Virgina happily swallowed the ~$6,000 in extra taxmoney, then I filed amended forms (or actually H&R did) saying I owed OK not VA. I paid Oklahoma the taxes I owed, and Virgina refused to recognize the amended forms, and they did eventually return the money, minus a fine.

H&R Block employs housewives and other part-time workers to fill out tax forms. They go through a brief training period, something like 4 weeks at their own expense. They are then "qualified" to work in an H&R Block office preparing tax returns.

If using H&R Block has only cost you $600, you are lucky indeed unless your income is less than maybe $30,000. Anything more than that, especially with anything that is even remotely complicated - like multiple states, rental property, etc. you are pla

No. Actually taxes are based on both where you live and where you work. That is, you are subject to their income tax rules if you live OR work in the state. Most states have built into their tax codes methods to avoid double taxation between states. The majority of these are via a credit on the resident state tax return for taxes paid to the non-resident state. Or, in other words, the state where you WORK gets the tax money. So for example, if you were a resident of Colorado on a temporary assignment in Texas, you would pay Colorado income tax on that money, because there's no income tax from Texas to generate a credit. If you were a resident of Colorado on a temporary assignment in California, you would file a tax return for both California and Colorado. You would pay the California taxes, and then apply taxes paid to California as a credit on your Colorado return and end up not paying Colorado income tax (so long as California has equal or greater tax rates than Colorado, otherwise Colorado would take the difference.)

There are certain exceptions. For example a few states have reciprocal agreements. As you experienced, Pennsylvania and New Jersey have a reciprocal agreement. What that means is the states have an agreement not to tax each other's residents. So Pennsylvania residents that work in New Jersey will pay only Pennsylvania income tax and New Jersey residents that work in Pennsylvania will pay only New Jersey income tax. But this is the EXCEPTION not the RULE. In fact, Pennsylvania only has reciprocal agreements with 6 states (Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia) - had you worked in any other state with an income tax you would have paid income tax to the state you worked in. And the majority of states have no reciprocal agreements at all.

Can't wait until they run Healthcare can you?They already do -- ever heard of Medicare? In fact, some of the loudest objections to the "Public Option" are from people who believe it will reduce the quality of the Government sponsored healthcare they already receive! Fucking greedy hypocrites!

Heh. I don't hear those fat fuckers in the senate complaining about their publicly run health care plan either, for all their protests that the Government couldn't possibly run a good health care plan. Yeah well if we gave everyone the plan those bastards got, the government surely would go bankrupt, but they'll continue to vote to extend those benefits and raise their salaries while the rest of the country burns.

My health care overhaul plan would state that no employee of the Federal Government may enjoy

Actually yes lawyers can be unemployed. I worked as a programmer in a law firm, and a lawyer was hired as a programmer because he claimed he couldn't find work as a lawyer. I trained him on Visual BASIC, Crystal Reports, and ASP 2.0 VBScript programming. After six months working as a programmer, he claimed he couldn't handle it, and that the job was too stressful and he quit and got hired as a lawyer by a rival law firm. I don't know why a lawyer would want to work as a programmer without any programming ex

You're probably thinking of the requirement to issue a 1099-misc (which is $600/year) or the requirement to pay self employment tax on self employment income ($400/year). There is no "don't have to report if less than $500/year" law. Due to the rounding done on a tax return, you effectively don't have to report anything less than $0.50 (because it rounds to 0) but otherwise you are legally required to report income regardless of amount. Now, despite the fact you're supposed to report all income in practice

They decided, for her, that the money she was collecting was sufficient to live on...

No, they didn't. Unemployment insurance is NOT welfare. The labor dept in this case did exactly what they were supposed to -- enforce the law as written.

The law is crazy and dumb, but that's not the Labor Dept's fault. It's the legislature's.

It will be worse when the government passes universal healthcare coverage. Under the current proposals, they will tell you whether you're insurance is sufficient, and if not, will fine you for not having the proper coverage. Eventually, as government continues it's reckless spending, more and more people will be told their coverage is insufficient as they try to cover the increasing debt. Then, you will decide to get the best coverage available so you won't be fined, and that will result in being taxed for having a "luxury" plan.

This would be BETTER and LESS WASTEFUL if we actually had a real welfare state -- the gov't guarantees a rock-bottom standard of living for everyone (food + shelter + healthcare), and every dollar you make beyond that is progressively taxed until you're supporting y

Unfortunately, that's not what the unemployment rules say. Your benefits aren't reduced if you're earning income, they end when you take a job or become self-employed. If you become unemployed again within a certain length of time, you can resume your previous claim instead of having to file a new one.

This is one reason I'd personally like to take welfare and unemployment, fold them all into one system and re-write the rules: